The present-day methods of heat absorption for heat pumps are based on the circulation of the heat transferring media by the collector, which is created by one or more circuits made from either plastic or metal tubing with a circular profile. The primary resources for the heating of residential homes are mainly renewable natural resources earth—water—air. The heat that has been stored as a result of solar radiation. For those regions and country sides having seasons with temperatures below zero, soil and water are mostly considered appropriate natural sources. These sources offer relatively constant temperature energetic potential year round. The very changeable energetic potential contained in the supra-surface atmospheric layer in the surrounding air could be used for ventilation of houses. The changing temperatures during the day and throughout the seasons in these areas do not positively influence the compressor, which is exposed to unbalanced load during operations.
In the course of collecting heat from subsurface layers the collecting tubing is either placed into excavation pits or in the case of earth bores they are installed into the bores, which are then filled up. The collector media are based on a mixture of water and non-freezing additives, CFC-free refrigerants as well as mixtures according to the type of collecting system and construction of transfer cooling equipment. Circular tubing is used in plastic collectors. Metal piping is usually made of copper. Both plastic and metal tubing can have an internal and external surface finish such as grooving or wall waving; the finish can also contain several layers. These kinds of amendments are usually executed in order to enlarge the heat transfer surface of the tubing or to increase the efficiency of heat transfer as well as to increase the resistance against corrosion, abrasion and breakdown and for easier bend ability. For installation into source environment the tubing is also shaped; by way of its external surface finish the tubing is mechanically fixated or welded into various shapes of tubular registers. The tubing is delivered as circular coils to construction sites or the location of further production. The disadvantage with single-layer or multilayer tubing is the elaborateness when shaping and laying it, which usually requires manual passing the so-called tubing memory. This is evident especially when shaping plastic tubing or with metal tubing of a larger diameter. Coil tubing collectors also take up more space when transporting and storing.
Medium and heavy machinery is used for constructing the present-day collecting systems of geothermal heat pumps. This usually refers to wheeled excavators that weight tones or to mobile drilling or compression forming equipment. This machinery allows for effective work management that corresponds to the present condition of technology in the sector of geothermic heat collection. The heavy machines are often transported for larger distances. In terms of history several methods and options of constructing subsurface geothermic collectors have been developed. When excavating soil for tubular heat pump collectors with the heat pump heating output of 10 kW the amount of soil that must be removed is 50 to 100 m3 in today's most cost-effective methods of construction. In the course of implementing drilling or compression forming for the same heat pump up to 130 meters of soil or rocky holes in length is needed.
Various methods and designs to produce ground heat exchangers were introduced. All are piping based in the collecting part of the heat pump systems. Direct exchange systems often replace the plastic ground loops with the smaller diameter copper loops. The ground evaporators and the indoor condensers consists of pipes with a certain degree of thermal conductivity in which the heat pump coolant circulates. Disadvantageous is small surface and small heat exchange area of the pipe surface. In the field air heat exchangers—all also use closed copper or metal pipes with metal profiles as evaporators. The heat absorbing parts have no moving parts or they are mostly equipped by a fan. It maintains high efficiency even at high outdoor air temperatures. The efficiency falls during outdoor temperatures go to the zero or below. The ice evaporators with or without the fans can be equipped by a loops placed in the Earth. However, all results are a medium efficiency heat pumps.
The document DE3039289 describes the system with ground metal cylinder tanks. The tanks include heat-carrying antifreeze fluid which is driven by the circulating pump—so-called antifreeze solution. It's obvious that the cylinder tanks with diameter D must have a high capacity and a large surface so that they could collect the ground heat required for the house heating. The tanks are buried under the ground surface in different depths without the possibility of their direct maintenance and/or check from the surface. The tanks are demanding for production, material consumption and installation. Indirect flooding irrigation of ground around the cylinder tanks by rain water is further mentioned in the document. According to the described solution the rain water falls on the roof of the object and is diverted down to the outside terrain. It's obvious, according such an indirect way of flooding irrigation, that the water absorption will be more complicated due to the frozen ground in spring period. The rain water absorption can't even occur, if the soil is tight and/or the tanks are put deep under the surface. The solution takes into account the depth from 2 m under the surface which is intensive for the construction and for the scope of ground works.
The dimensioning of the intrinsic output of the heat pump and therefore the scope of ground work can also influence controlled ventilation of heated houses in which energetic potential of changed air is reused. The demands on controlled ventilation of houses increase together with the increased demands on the quality of insulation of constructional materials of the construction site. The total demands on reused heat when ventilating the home is up to 60% of the total annual heat supply for heating. Changed air, or in this case waste air, usually has an average temperature of +20° C. The transfer of heat energy occurs in the following ways. The first possibility is to use a recuperator, or in other words a countercurrent channel air-to-air exchanger in which heat energy is removed from changed air and is transferred to air that has been aspirated from outside. The efficiency of the present-day recuperators is about 90%. The high efficiency of this equipment leads to the development of condensate that can freeze on the plates of the recuperator and therefore influences its functioning. This effect arises when the outside temperature of aspirated air falls below zero. For this reason recuperators began being equipped with a specially ground heat exchanger, which secures preheating of the aspirated outside air. These kinds of ground exchangers can simultaneously cool the house in the summer when the outside temperatures are high. The temperature of the air that was cooled in the ground heat exchanger in the course of the cooling function is +16 to +23° C. upon entrance into the house. The disadvantage of this method is the possibility of the condensate freezing on the recuperator plates in the winter if preheating of aspirated outside air in the ground heat exchanger had not been selected.
The next possibility is inside air that is cooled when passing through the air-to-refrigerant exchanger or the passage of air—non-freezing mixture inside the heat pump. Fresh outside air is aspirated into the house by way of a ventilation hole in the periphery walling or in the roof. The positioning of the exchanger normally depends on the cladding of the interior heat pump or by the house's utility room. The disadvantage is using a different specialized heat exchanger in the heat pump and a more complicated construction of the heat pump.
The coefficient of performance COP expresses the work efficiency of heat pumps or, in other words, their immediate operational savings. The factor can be increased in several ways. One example is the utilization of the heat energy of rain water collected from the roof of the house.
Another accessible heat source for heat pumps can be solar collectors, which transfer direct solar heat by way of circulating fluid. In terms of family-type homes solar systems are usually designed smaller and serve to heat up service water in the boiler found inside the home or in the attic. Larger solar systems also support warm-water heating in the winter as a heat source for the heating of an outdoor or indoor pool. In today's technology heat pumps, as heat generators and therefore engineering equipment, exist in the design that is positioned either inside or outside with respect to the tempered house. Outdoor versions of heat pumps have been construction all conceived as single-purpose equipment with conforming arrangement of individual components. The disadvantage is that these heat pumps does not integrate other natural sources including direct solar energy, geothermic heating or the cooling of aspirated fresh air or the utilization of rain water and underground water.
The solution with indoor heat pumps and with propeller and gear wind generator is introduced in the document WO2005/028861. The heat pump system is again piping based in the collecting part. The solution ensures production of electricity for the independent supply of the heat pump system. It's known that the disadvantage of the wind electricity generation is its dependence on the wind speed and on the long-term local wind conditions. If the wind speed isn't sufficient then the required electric output isn't achieved or the electricity generation is not possible at all. The power allowance is therefore necessary for case of wind calm in less favourable localities, which further increases the system price. As described in the document, the heat supply is ensured by the complicated solution of the traditional water based heat pump systems connected in a complex with independent fluid collecting tanks. The delivery of the heat energy which is collected from the ground, outlet waste water and from the block of solar collectors is provided by independent electric circulating pumps. Water and antifreeze additives or so-called antifreeze solution are used as the heat-carrying filling. In a typical heat pump installation, the ground loop consists of hundreds or thousands of feet of plastic piping buried in deep and wide trenches. This antifreeze solution must be pumped through hundreds of meters of piping, which consumes a significant amount of electric energy. The whole system with the heat pumps further includes many parts that are connected without mutual construction and energetic support. Such an installation takes a lot of space inside and outside the object. The scope of the ground works on the ground pipe collector is large and expensive. It's similar with the wind generator of the required power output. According to the document it's also possible to connect ventilation and conditioning unit with an extra recuperator and other heat pump with two electric circulating pumps. Such a solution will again increase the price and the effort on the whole installation of the propeller wind generator with heat pumps, ground pipe collector, fluid tanks and solar collectors.
A number of ways for the transfer of heat into electricity by thermoelectric cells were described. Thermo-electric conversion is also mentioned in document US2005/087221. This document describes the system for the conversion of the heat energy of the fire operated equipments. Produced electricity is used for the powering of a circulation fan of the heating equipment. The system reduces the consumption of the electric energy for the drive of a fan. Production of electricity from the heat energy gained by wood burning is also described. In case gas can't be used as a fuel, wood or oil is burned. Fuels that produce contaminants by burning are burnt. The thermopile with the heat conversion from high temperature heat sources is also mentioned in this document. Hot springs, solar heat and volcanic pools are mentioned. The heat from high temperature source is applied through the heat pipe to the thermopile. The heat energy follows this way: flame/high temperature source—heat pipe—thermopile/electricity—application. It's obvious that electricity is produced in energy converter out of the reach of compressor refrigerant circuit and out of the reach of a heat pump working circuit. There is no communication between refrigerant and/or heat carriers of a compressor heat pumping systems and the thermopile when electricity is produced. It's evident that the possibility of the realisation of the heating and cooling equipments in this way and method, and with such high temperature sources is limited just by their occurrence. Gas, oil and wood are paid fuels which are usually demanding for storage and transportation to the place of consumption. Hot springs, year-long solar heat and volcanic pools don't usually occur on family houses plots and in inhabited areas. The application ensures transformation of wasted heat from fire operated heating device to electricity to power the fan.
On the contrary, in the inhabited areas where the above mentioned burning fuels or mentioned high temperature sources cannot be found, systems with heat pumps that use so-called low potential natural heat are being built. It means the solar energy contained in ground, water and air is mostly used. In such households also other devices with a heat pump circuits and/or refrigerant compressor circuits are used as common home appliances e.g., refrigerators, freezers, air-conditioning units etc. These home appliances use the low potential heat energy contained in solids, liquids and gases. The different solutions introduced in my application WO2008/014726 deal just with such home appliances. They therefore have wide range of uses. The electricity is produced by direct thermo-electric conversion from heat energy of a refrigerant circuit and/or circuits, working circuit and/or circuits of a heat pumping and/or heat pumps, and of all other devices with cooling and heating circuits. The heat energy transmitted from the heat source to the another place by a refrigerant circuits is used for electricity production. The heat energy follows this way: heat source—heat transfer medium and/or refrigerant of a refrigerant circuit—compression and condensation for heat delivery and/or expansion for heat extraction—thermoelectric conversion/electricity—application. It is obvious that a mutual heat communication is produced between the refrigerant and/or heat carriers of a heat pumping circuit and the thermoelectric layers for the electricity production. The electricity produced by thermo-electric conversion serves backwards for the system refrigerant compressor drive if realized and/or for the supply of light and/or other device parts and/or for other electric applications.
The use cases according to this invention and above introduced and described heat energy way are, the heat pumps for the household heating and/or cooling, the use of the electricity consumption lowering for the supply of compressors, circulation pumps, ventilators; also in the case of refrigerators, freezers, refrigerated show cabinets, the electricity supply of light, light of an advertisement, brandnames, trademarks, the electricity supply of air-conditioners and their electric parts, compressors etc. Heating and/or cooling devices according to this invention helping to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. At the same time, it contributes to lowering of the pollutants from burnable fuels.
The belt/plate heat exchangers according to this application are suitable for heat collection and/or heat delivery on the primary side and/or on the secondary side of a heat pump; in other words outside and/or inside the house. The use case generally by refrigerant heat pumping devices is outside and/or inside the space to be heated/cooled. Inside the belt/plate heat exchangers can lead in various directions at least one channel or chamber and used heat carriers. The channels or chambers can also have various and variable shapes and profiles. The heat pump with a collection system and/or transfer of heat energy according to this invention can be equipped with the optional modules for improving heat exchange efficiencies and a value of coefficients of performance.